


Connections

by WonderBoy



Series: Growing Up Ain't What It Seems [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bonding, Family Fluff, Gen, Reminiscing, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 14:57:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13743354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WonderBoy/pseuds/WonderBoy
Summary: “Wait, do you want to stay and do a mask with me?”Pidge rolled her eyes. Even if she did turn back around to face him. “Uh,”“C’mon,” Lance said before she could formulate a more eloquent response. “What about in the picture with you and Matt? You were all dressed up then. Don't you miss pampering yourself a little?”





	Connections

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this idea for a while but haven't been able to focus on it. But tonight we had a power outage and without any other distractions, I was finally able to pound out the rest of it haha.
> 
> Also I love them? This was such a fun dynamic to write. There will probably be more of this pair popping up.

“Lance? Hunk told me I could find you here,” Pidge called as she slipped through the door of his room. Projections of the team filtered over the pale walls of the dorm, but the small space was otherwise impersonal, a vast contrast to the disaster zone she had made of her own room. “Lance?”

His head poked around the doorway of his attached bathroom, half a face-masked smeared over his cheeks and forehead. “Oh, hey Pidge. Sorry, I totally forgot about bringing you the logs from the mission. I just…needed to relax.”

“Uh right, well just come find me when you’re done I guess,” She had already started to turn away when he called her back.

“Wait, do you want to stay and do a mask with me?”

Pidge rolled her eyes. Even if she did turn back around to face him. “Uh,”

“C’mon,” Lance said before she could formulate a more eloquent response. “What about in the picture with you and Matt? You were all dressed up then. Don't you miss pampering yourself a little?”

And that actually gave her pause.

How long had it been since she let herself get dressed up and feel girly? It was easier, she supposed, to just be “one of the guys” on the ship, like she had been at the Garrison. The only other girl around was Allura and lately even the princess had spent more time suited up for battle than in her old dresses.

Lance shook a small container at her, as if trying to tempt her with a treat. “C’mon, you know you want to,” he sang.

She sighed, but she could feel a smile quirking the corners of her lips before she could stop it. “Fine, but just this once.”

Lance cheered, as if he had successfully completed an important mission, rather than simply convincing her to join him, and waved her over. She leaned against the doorway to watch as Lance finished applying the mask to his own face.

“Where did you even find face masks on a spaceship?” She asked as he carefully touched up thinner areas. It wasn’t something that she had really considered until now. “You didn’t bring that with you, did you?”

Lance laughed. “No! Coran found some for me when I was lamenting about slacking on my skincare routine. We had to tweak the recipe a little though. The first one I tried burned so bad I couldn’t believe I wasn’t actually left disfigured.” He caught her expression in the mirror and laughed again. “I promise its safe now. You’ve seen my beautiful face. Do you think I would keep doing this if it was hurting me?” He reassured her with a wink.

He rinsed off his hands, patting them dry with a towel before he stepped to the side and gestured for her to sit on the sink.

She squinted at him suspiciously. “I’m not _that_ short, Lance! I can look in the mirror like this.”

“Eh,” he dragged out the noise, as if seriously considering that, until she punched his arm. Rubbing the sore spot, he stuck out his tongue at her. “I’ll put it on for you. There’s an art to it.”

She wasn’t sure she really believed him, but she found herself hoisting herself up onto the counter anyways, the mirror to her back. Lance positioned himself in front of her, brandishing the small container and a triumphant smile. With his free hand, he carefully removed her glasses, folding them and placing them to the side. Pidge blinked owlishly at him as her eyes adjusted again. There was still a residual phantom weight of the glasses on her ears that always made her feel disoriented at first. Lance dipped a hand into the slave, coating two fingers in the off-white paste.

“It’s a little cold at first,” he warned. “But it feels good after a few seconds.”

He slathered it heavily across her nose, laughing as she jumped. “Cold” was an understatement.

So, she half-heartedly kicked his leg.

“Hey! I warned you!” he defended, dancing away from the offending limb, but a mischievous smile still split across his lips.

“You’re such a pain,” she grumbled, but dropped her defenses.

He returned to his position in front of her, his expression marginally more serious as he carefully spread what he had left on her nose across a wider space. And as she got used to the temperature, she understood what he meant about it feeling nice. There was a soothing note to the contrast of cool paste against her warm skin.

With little else to do, she watched his face as he worked. His expression was serious as he studied her, and it might have made her nervous if she didn’t see the soft light in his eyes and the gentle curve of his smile. Even under the ridiculous face mask, he was _almost_ attractive enough to warrant all his jokes and ego.

_Almost._

“Did you really have a skin care regime back on Earth?” She asked. Suddenly the silence felt strange.

Lance hummed to himself, thinking of his answer. “Kind of. Mostly it was just something I did with my older sister when we were both home, but…it was something nice to have. A routine. And a connection to home.”

He put down the container and studied her. “We need something to keep your bangs back, one sec.”

Shoving the container into her hands, he disappeared back into his room. She couldn’t imagine what he had to use, considering how sparse the room was, but she could hear him rummaging around through the sparse furnishings.

She looked down at the paste, and then at the glasses she didn’t really need sitting nearby. A connection to home. That was definitely something she could understand.

“Aha!” Lance returned with a triumphant grin, brandishing a sparkly, purple, flower hair clip.

She stared in disbelief as he carefully gathered her bangs and pushed them away from her face, positioning the clip in her hair with a gentle, expert touch.

“Uh...” She wasn’t sure what question to ask, though a number were on the tip of her tongue.

Lance smiled as he took the container back from her, but there was a touch of melancholy that darkened the look. “It was one of my niece’s. I had it on my keychain at the Garrison. She gave it to me so I ‘wouldn’t forget my favorite girl in space.’ She didn’t really get what the Garrison was yet, but then again,” He trailed off, but it was easy to catch his meaning.

Pidge wished she had the words to make his smile go back to what it was before, but she didn’t feel much better at comforting people than Keith. Still, she reached out, squeezing his hand in her own. He wasn’t that much older than her, but his hands were still significantly larger than her own, warm and strong. A small callous was forming on the inside of his trigger finger and she pressed her thumb against the small imperfection. He was different than Matt in so many ways, and no one could really be a replacement for her brother, but he undeniably felt like part of her family now.

Lance squeezed her hand back, thumb running over her knuckles, before he dropped her hand to resume spreading the mask over her face.

He let silence settle around them for a few minutes before he spoke again, and she couldn’t help but wonder how much of that time was just his way of calming himself after the reminder of his family.

“So, I was right, wasn’t I? About you liking to dress up before you became ‘Pidge Gunderson’?” He said her alias in an exaggeratedly deep voice, earning a surprised laugh from her for his trouble.

She schooled her expression back to something more neutral before she messed up the parts of the mask that had started to dry across the bridge of her nose and cheeks. “Yeah I did. I mean, I was still getting the hang of it before ‘Pidge Gunderson,’” She dropped her voice in an attempt to imitate him and he winked at her. “But it was nice.” She wasn’t sure why the particular memory suddenly came to her then, but she fought back another laugh. “When I was thirteen my mom bought me my first makeup, just a cheap kit, like for kids, but I was so excited. I did my make up for my birthday dinner thinking I could surprise my dad and Matt with this ‘new me’ when they got back, but when I came down, Matt _laughed_ at me until he was red in the face. Tears and everything.”

Lance frowned as Pidge giggled to herself at the memory. His displeasure only seemed to make the laughter worse as she remembered her parents’ reaction.

“God, Mom was _so_ mad. More than I had ever seen her before.”

Lance nodded once, sharply. “Good, he shouldn’t have laughed at you.”

Pidge started to shake her head, only remembering at the last minute that it wouldn’t be a good choice with his hand smearing the mask across her forehead. “Oh no, he should have. I had no idea what I was doing and put eyeshadow all the way around my eyes. I looked like a blue raccoon for two days.”

For a moment Lance kept his fierce expression, but after a moment she could see the twitch of his smile as he tried to keep from laughing at the image.

“But still, as revenge, after he fell asleep, mom and I put a full face of makeup on him, complete with my eyeshadow stylings and hearts on his cheeks in blush.”

That broke past Lance’s resolved and he laughed with her. “What'd he do?”

She smiled at the memory, not only of how proud she had been of the revenge plan, but of how apologetic he had been when he realized how hurt she had actually been by the laughter at the time. “He wore it to school the next day. Said it was what he deserved. It looked pretty bad though, I'm not sure he deserved _that_ much.”

“He totally did,” Lance disagreed loyally. He took a step back and studied her carefully. With a nod, he grabbed a top for the small container and returned it to the counter. “Your mask is complete, my lady. But you have to leave it on for half an hour. While we wait, wanna see if there's some make-up we could use on the ship? I've been told I can do a mean makeover”

Pidge laughed. “Sure, just no blue eyeshadow.”

Lance offered her a hand, helping her jump off the sink. “Of course not, green is obviously more your color.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me, request new things, or just stalk the progress of other fics on tumblr @ thathopelessromantic.tumblr.com
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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